Thursday, 10 September 2015

On the Varieties of Otherness

In the blog this week: The Institute publishes a series of articles on contemporary art and philosophy in conjunction with the Talk Art/Talk Society events. The second blog post is written by Valter Holmström and deals with a reoccurring concept in contemporary art and philosophy, the concept of the Other.

First, three entangled quotes. During an
event at the Finnish Institute in London, artist Tellervo Kalleinen defined the
red line running through her artworks as “making the Other seem like any one of us”. In a recent interview the British MP Chuka Umunna accused the Tories and UKIP of pursuing a “politics of othering”,[1]
and approximately 145 years ago the French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud coined
the cryptic phrase “Je est un Autre”
in a letter to his teacher – I am an Other.

What does this eclectic collection of
quotes mean? The concept of the Other – note the capital O – has gained
increased popularity during the last decades, a concept that is steadily creeping
into art-talk, cultural critic’s columns and the vocabularies of various public
intellectuals. Inevitably, a concept with such a wide use becomes slightly
sticky – it attracts a multitude of meanings and as such could do with some unpacking.
A return to the philosophical roots of the concept might be in order, to map its
conceptual mechanisms.

In its original abstract philosophical sense
the concept of the Other is simply a negation, a sort of negative definition: all
that which is not “the Same”. And, perhaps more fittingly, that which is not the
Self: anything outside self-consciousness. In this sense the Other is often
seen as constitutive of the Self, of self-awareness, as the self can only be
grasped when an outside to the self is posited – the Other draws a line where
the self can emerge as an object of reflection.[2]

Kasimir Malevich's black square painting series from 1915 primarily display contrast (and were in themselves an

attempt to inject a radical Otherness into the established art scene)

In a slightly different but related sense
the Other is specifically used to designate other people. And a similar dynamic
of definition through opposition is visible here – we become aware of ourselves
and define ourselves through contrasting ourselves to other people. This is especially
visible in the construction of cultural identities, which work like collective
selves. We create cultural identities
like “Finnishness” through contrasting it to other nationalities and identities.
So the construction of this collective Self, this Sameness, is always dependent
on a certain construction of Otherness.

A popular conception, for instance in
postcolonial theory, is that some groups of people become defined as specifically Other, to work as a form of inverted mirror for a dominant culture. This
is why we often construct a common image of the Other that is unflattering to embellish
the image of ourselves. The cultural theorist Edward Said, for instance, examined
how the dominant view of the far East – as the mysterious Orient – had been systematically
constructed throughout the 19th century in Europe. A contrast to the
identity “civilized westerner” was created, in culture, anthropology and art. Something
decadent, promiscuously barbaric and backwards to bolster the sense of purity
and historical progress that the western civilization was thought to embody –
the west desperately needed an Other.

Indeed many groups or communities run the
risk of uncritically projecting Otherness in the attempts to create a common
identity. When today, after recent elections in Finland and the UK, we see a
kind of cultural protectionism emerging in politics, we can also note an
increase of generalized Others in the public imagination. Whether it is the image of the immigrant,
the EU-bureaucracy, the Greek or the naive internationalists, a convenient set of
counterpoints is created to cement national identity. For an identity often
gives a sense of stability and security in a world that is often in flux – it
works kind of like a coping mechanism.

Otherness will always be present in our
experience of the world to some extent, it is part of our very structure of
thought and experience. On a cultural level, however, we can see that Otherness is often very
unequally or irrationally distributed, and that these constructions often serve
ideological purposes – be it national, class-biased or gendered. Often they
work to externalize our anxieties into scapegoats, and in the process create glossy
illusions of our own communities and identities.

This insight might be why the concept of
the Other has crept into artists’ work and the general cultural discourse. Ideally,
its use could be turned into a tactic of using art to redistribute Otherness
more equally, deconstruct the myths of Sameness that create sharp distinctions
between an "us" and a "them". To repeat Kalleinen’s words, to make the Other seem like
any of us, or – as in Umunna’s case – criticize the Othering trends in
politics. And lastly, to paraphrase Rimbaud, to see the otherness inherent in
ourselves.

5 comments:

It gives a nice view of traditional arts, it is really awesome to see such stuff. It is very useful for the students who is spending their times in such research. I am one of such student and it is very useful for me. You can collect best resume from professional resume writing service easily.

A professional college paper writing services holder can help you with writing quality paper, which can be an extremely threatening procedure - particularly for school passage papers and applications, or expositions for distribution.

About the blog

The Finnish Institute in London works to identify issues in contemporary society in the fields of art, culture and social studies. We encourage cross-disciplinary and international collaboration. We engage in research, new ideas and thinking – and provide our partners with a platform to discuss and act. This blog is such a platform.